ZINFI Technologies, Inc.

Telemarketing has been around for decades, and everyone is very familiar with the dinnertime “Are you happy with your long distance service?” phone call. A proven technique for drumming up widespread sales and awareness, telemarketing has become a cultural norm. The evolution of marketing in recent years has marked the emergence of a new term, “inside sales,” that refers to a more focused, prospected and targeted approach to lead development—not just churn. Teleprospecting grew out of inside sales and has now become a first-tier technique used in conjunction with other lead and demand generation efforts to not only commence dialogue but also achieve qualification of new leads that come across any vendor’s radar. Teleprospecting best practices to ensure sales success are now a focal point for any good sales enablement scenario.

It is important to differentiate between the goals and definitions of teleprospecting versus telemarketing. The two terms are often used interchangeably. Both are seen as a phone-based sales technique, but in reality the approaches and end goals are vastly different. Telemarketing is a one-shot “spray and pray” tactic that is crafted to cover a vast audience base, using a templated script and with a focus on generating a lead to pass on to sales—but with little consideration of the path of that lead takes once it is passed along. It is a rapid, repetitive and funneled approach.

Whereas the primary goal of the telemarketer is to quickly resonate with the target audience and close a sale, teleprospecting is about connecting with leads, identifying their “pain points” and qualifying areas of need that the service or product addresses. The teleprospector is tasked with calling a very focused, crafted list of leads that have been pre-identified as market prospects, and spending time to communicate one-to-one to establish a true qualification so the sales team is equipped to take the lead to the next tier of the sales process. This initial communication may start with an introductory script, but unlike the telemarketer who sticks to the tree structure of the finite pitch, the teleprospector quickly moves on to appropriate next-step questions based on the lead’s answers. The idea is to guide the dialogue to a point where the lead realizes a particular service or product is needed.

Let’s take a look at four key considerations in guiding your teleprospecting reps as they work to establish a successful relationship between qualifying a lead and closing a sale:

Align prospecting and sales teams regionally. Companies that are moving toward a large global footprint tend to have sales teams that were fostered based on industry or market segments. When teleprospecting teams come on board to begin qualifying leads in these new areas, these reps may be aligned with sales team members accordingly. This creates a disjointed regional approach, with lead lists spread over dispersed countries. A better practice is to review your global reach and reassign sales teams to regional groupings—and have the teleprospecting reps align accordingly. This will create better cohesion between prospecting and sales, and allow for coordinated approaches in a unified and timely manner. Adaptation to cultural norms and traditions can also be achieved and carried through contiguous efforts between both teams.

Develop a pass-back conduit between sales and teleprospectors. Once a lead has been qualified and passed to the sales team’s queue, it should be handled or prioritized according to company policy or quarterly goals. Often a lead may become stale or cold to the sales rep, whether immediately (due to handoff change or lag time) or as an effect of not having been nurtured for some time. In cases like these, passing the lead back to the teleprospecting team to “reignite” would be advantageous. The rep had previously developed a relationship with this lead through the prospecting cycle, and hearing from a familiar contact may warm the lead up again. The prospect may even open with newly developed needs or pain points that can be used as a new advantage to sales. People tend to be attracted most by what they can identify with or what seems familiar. This loop can warm up a lead again so that traction is re-established when passed back to sales for follow-up.

Provide supportive resources to your prospecting rep. The best practice for any teleprospecting rep is to go into any initial touch with the best research and information possible. Having a brief but effective dossier on the prospect will help the rep develop trust and insight with the lead as they go through qualification. There are many tools and resources available that will help enhance their call preparation—social media, MSPs, business news/review sites, etc.—and these should all be available and accessible to your prospecting rep. In turn, once the lead qualification first touch has been achieved, post-call communication tools—file sharing services, CRMs, automation platforms—are the best ways for the rep to keep up the dialogue and take the lead through the qualification journey, easing handoff to sales in a refined flow.

Clearly define teleprospecting management. Teleprospecting is indeed a step in the sales process, but it should always be defined as a marketing effort. Make sure accountability and reporting fall to marketing managers. There is a tendency to view accountability as having ties to both marketing and sales, due to the nature of prospecting as the step between “getting the customer into the restaurant and sitting them down to serve them their dinner.” But don’t let management of teleprospecting float back and forth between marketing, channel management and sales. Every step should be managed by one accountable department to ensure consistent processes and reporting. This will help with time management, flow of information and corporate culture solidarity.

Achieving the right leads and the right prospects for your sales team to gain momentum is the end goal of any teleprospecting effort. It may be one of many methods of lead qualification or generation, but it is by far the most personal and communicative. To ensure that you are getting the most out of any prospecting campaign, the four considerations presented here will help you align, hold accountable and equip your reps with both tactical and conceptual parameters in which to operate most efficiently. Hold the phones…it’s time to enhance your prospecting results!

For more information on marketing automation or demand generation services, please visit us at www.zinfi.com.

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Telemarketing has been around for decades, and everyone is very familiar with the dinnertime “Are you happy with your long distance service?” phone call. A proven technique for drumming up widespread sales and awareness, telemarketing has become a cultural norm. The evolution of marketing in recent years has marked the emergence of a new term, “inside sales,” that refers to a more focused, prospected and targeted approach to lead development—not just churn. Teleprospecting grew out of inside sales and has now become a first-tier technique used in conjunction with other lead and demand generation efforts to not only commence dialogue but also achieve qualification of new leads that come across any vendor’s radar. Teleprospecting best practices to ensure sales success are now a focal point for any good sales enablement scenario.

It is important to differentiate between the goals and definitions of teleprospecting versus telemarketing. The two terms are often used interchangeably. Both are seen as a phone-based sales technique, but in reality the approaches and end goals are vastly different. Telemarketing is a one-shot “spray and pray” tactic that is crafted to cover a vast audience base, using a templated script and with a focus on generating a lead to pass on to sales—but with little consideration of the path of that lead takes once it is passed along. It is a rapid, repetitive and funneled approach.

Whereas the primary goal of the telemarketer is to quickly resonate with the target audience and close a sale, teleprospecting is about connecting with leads, identifying their “pain points” and qualifying areas of need that the service or product addresses. The teleprospector is tasked with calling a very focused, crafted list of leads that have been pre-identified as market prospects, and spending time to communicate one-to-one to establish a true qualification so the sales team is equipped to take the lead to the next tier of the sales process. This initial communication may start with an introductory script, but unlike the telemarketer who sticks to the tree structure of the finite pitch, the teleprospector quickly moves on to appropriate next-step questions based on the lead’s answers. The idea is to guide the dialogue to a point where the lead realizes a particular service or product is needed.

Let’s take a look at four key considerations in guiding your teleprospecting reps as they work to establish a successful relationship between qualifying a lead and closing a sale:

* Align prospecting and sales teams regionally. Companies that are moving toward a large global footprint tend to have sales teams that were fostered based on industry or market segments. When teleprospecting teams come on board to begin qualifying leads in these new areas, these reps may be aligned with sales team members accordingly. This creates a disjointed regional approach, with lead lists spread over dispersed countries. A better practice is to review your global reach and reassign sales teams to regional groupings—and have the teleprospecting reps align accordingly. This will create better cohesion between prospecting and sales, and allow for coordinated approaches in a unified and timely manner. Adaptation to cultural norms and traditions can also be achieved and carried through contiguous efforts between both teams.

* Develop a pass-back conduit between sales and teleprospectors. Once a lead has been qualified and passed to the sales team’s queue, it should be handled or prioritized according to company policy or quarterly goals. Often a lead may become stale or cold to the sales rep, whether immediately (due to handoff change or lag time) or as an effect of not having been nurtured for some time. In cases like these, passing the lead back to the teleprospecting team to “reignite” would be advantageous. The rep had previously developed a relationship with this lead through the ...

Wouldn’t we all rather have customers willingly walk through our door instead of having to stand on the sidewalk and wave our arms for attention? Once upon a time, business had a solid advertising model to get an audience—you have a product, so you pay for print ads, billboards, television time and radio spots to get the word out. Commerce had to rely on well-placed advertisements to show up and be positioned where the target audience was. But now, in the Internet age, people are surfing in droves on the web. We know where they will be, and the savvy marketer can now get a very clear view of their searching and browsing behavior. So, instead of making a lot of noise with paid marketing and vying with your competitors for ad space (outbound marketing), you can carefully place attention-grabbing content in key online venues and—in very targeted ways—engage your audience, intrigue them and get them to come to you. Welcome to inbound marketing.

Let’s be clear on the difference between these two approaches. Outbound marketing requires outreach on the part of the marketer through concerted efforts such as paid and search engine marketing techniques. You find the customer and try to actively capture their attention. Inbound marketing is the opposite, wherein intelligently placed content (blogs, articles, syndicated content on sharing sites, social media posts, etc.) is distributed and made available for the public to find and digest, hopefully influencing their decision to come to you to find out more. Whereas outbound marketing is typically “live” only for a finite period through budgetary spending and rented digital space, inbound marketing content is perpetual and available for discovery without boundaries. Because of this key difference, it is important to make sure the everlasting content you put out there to drive people to you is of high quality, is relevant to your target audience and provides genuine thought leadership in your industry.

Let’s take a look at some helpful questions to ask yourself as you attempt to strengthen your inbound marketing strategy and gauge its effectiveness:

What are current trending topics? Thought leadership is an important part of inbound marketing. People will gravitate towards your content and follow through to your website or offer if they recognize authority and influence in what you have to offer. Can they learn something? Can they benefit from what you offer? And why would they listen to you? The best way to be a thought leader is to put out relevant content on a regular basis that revolves around topical and trending discussions in your industry or space. Spend some time researching and thinking about the current topics of interest in your industry space, and then create assets that answer or speak to those discussions to distribute on sites like LinkedIn, SlideShare, YouTube and Facebook. Be timely, be relevant.

What are your competitors talking about? Listening to what your audience is talking about is not enough. You also need to pay close attention to what your competitors are saying and what kind of buzz they are creating. Like you, they are probably distributing their own content on hot topics, but what if they’re missing the mark? If your service or product does a better job of addressing a trending issue or pain point, then jump on it. Use your inbound marketing resources to enter the discussion and show you have a better solution, and do it in a way that ties back to your offerings. Instead of coming off as a veiled ad, your content should position your offering as a more intelligent and beneficial approach to the specific problem or issue under discussion.

What are industry analysts and influencers blogging or commenting on? Every industry has its share of analysts and influencers. Analysts (who make a living performing primary and secondary research on specific industries) and influencers (who have authority based on reputation and public acclaim) can be your best friends without even knowing it. Often the topics or theories being searched or discussed by your customers originate from commentary by analysts or influencers in your industry. Your inbound marketing content should align with these discussions. If you distribute quality, relevant content in a timely manner, your organization will be an integral part of these discussions and you’ll be immersed in the latest buzz. Make sure to tag or credit these analysts or influencers when posting your content. This will make your inbound marketing efforts more readily found and searched, and align you with these authoritative figures—giving you more presence and driving better conversion to your site or offerings.

Is your content synchronized across channels for maximum effect? Once you have discovered a compelling central theme or topic on which to base your next round of inbound marketing efforts, make sure to stick with it across all channels. You can create an article, blog post, video, eBook, slides and more—all around this one talking point—and then release it in one coordinated wave. This will help tie your thought leadership together across all your share sites. If your audience encounters different versions of the same content on different channels, this will make you more recognizable. They are more likely to associate a specific advocacy or solution with you, and be more inclined to click through to your website

Is your inbound marketing content relevant to pain points of real customers? Every customer or enterprise has its own set of pain points and solutions it is desperately trying to remedy. These may be part of the trending discussions I have referred to above, or they might be pervasive throughout the industry, but not yet openly discussed. Try to get ahead of the game by listening to your leads, prospects and existing customers and segmenting out their common problems. Create thought leadership content around these issues and distribute the content through your inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is great for new leads, but what about your existing customers? Inbound marketing is traditionally looked at as a technique for lead generation or bringing in new prospects. But can’t an existing prospect be a NEW prospect in a different way? Your existing customers are already in your wheelhouse and are paying for some portion of your solution set, but it’s likely you have other offerings they are not currently using. Consider targeting part of your inbound marketing efforts to this existing client base, emphasizing the relevance and benefits of a more comprehensive solution.

Are you paying attention to the right performance metrics? Everyone wants to know how many people are coming to their site and the conversion rates generated by specific links. That’s great, but that’s not the only metric that determines success in lead conversion. Your inbound marketing might create lots of buzz, with lots of people clicking on links in your social media, syndicated assets and messaging—but once they hit your site or landing page, what happens then? Look at your referral traffic (who is coming to your site from your syndicated content and social activity) and compare that to on-page drop, bounce or call-to-action (CTA) conversion. There’s little benefit to driving loads of traffic to your site through inbound marketing if a majority of those people back out right away or don’t convert the form or CTA you are offering. If they are coming and looking, but not taking action, you need to figure out why. Make sure to align what you offer and how it is presented with the content you put out there publicly, and pay attention to which referrers are driving the most traffic to you. Review the content you have on the top referring sites and align your landing page with that.

Inbound marketing is an effective and powerful tool if managed right, and it can be a sleeping giant—it doesn’t go away once someone’s budget expires. Be a good listener. If you pay close attention to trending topics, determine who is leading the discussion around them and what is being said, and establish the relevance of those topics to the solutions you have to offer, you’re in a great position to create effective inbound marketing materials and content. Create it in an authoritative and coordinated way, distribute it through partners across various channels, and make sure your website destination page aligns nicely with what you have distributed.

For more information on marketing automation or demand generation services, please visit us at ZINFI.com.

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Wouldn’t we all rather have customers willingly walk through our door instead of having to stand on the sidewalk and wave our arms for attention? Once upon a time, business had a solid advertising model to get an audience—you have a product, so you pay for print ads, billboards, television time and radio spots to get the word out. Commerce had to rely on well-placed advertisements to show up and be positioned where the target audience was. But now, in the Internet age, people are surfing in droves on the web. We know where they will be, and the savvy marketer can now get a very clear view of their searching and browsing behavior. So, instead of making a lot of noise with paid marketing and vying with your competitors for ad space (outbound marketing), you can carefully place attention-grabbing content in key online venues and—in very targeted ways—engage your audience, intrigue them and get them to come to you. Welcome to inbound marketing.Let’s be clear on the difference between these two approaches. Outbound marketing requires outreach on the part of the marketer through concerted efforts such as paid and search engine marketing techniques. You find the customer and try to actively capture their attention. Inbound marketing is the opposite, wherein intelligently placed content (blogs, articles, syndicated content on sharing sites, social media posts, etc.) is distributed and made available for the public to find and digest, hopefully influencing their decision to come to you to find out more. Whereas outbound marketing is typically “live” only for a finite period through budgetary spending and rented digital space, inbound marketing content is perpetual and available for discovery without boundaries. Because of this key difference, it is important to make sure the everlasting content you put out there to drive people to you is of high quality, is relevant to your target audience and provides genuine thought leadership in your industry.Let’s take a look at some helpful questions to ask yourself as you attempt to strengthen your inbound marketing strategy and gauge its effectiveness:* What are current trending topics? Thought leadership is an important part of inbound marketing. People will gravitate towards your content and follow through to your website or offer if they recognize authority and influence in what you have to offer. Can they learn something? Can they benefit from what you offer? And why would they listen to you? The best way to be a thought leader is to put out relevant content on a regular basis that revolves around topical and trending discussions in your industry or space. Spend some time researching and thinking about the current topics of interest in your industry space, and then create assets that answer or speak to those discussions to distribute on sites like LinkedIn, SlideShare, YouTube and Facebook. Be timely, be relevant.* What are your competitors talking about? Listening to what your audience is talking about is not enough. You also need to pay close attention to what your competitors are saying and what kind of buzz they are creating. Like you, they are probably distributing their own content on hot topics, but what if they’re missing the mark? If your service or product does a better job of addressing a trending issue or pain point, then jump on it. Use your inbound marketing resources to enter the discussion and show you have a better solution, and do it in a way that ties back to your offerings. Instead of coming off as a veiled ad, your content should position your offering as a more intelligent and beneficial approach to the specific problem or issue under discussion.* What are industry analysts and influencers blogging or commenting on? Every industry has its share of analysts and influencers. Analysts (who make a living performing primary and secondary research on ...

Wouldn’t we all rather have customers willingly walk through our door instead of having to stand on the sidewalk and wave our arms for attention? Once upon a time, business had a solid advertising model to get an audience—you have a product, so you pay for print ads, billboards, television time and radio spots to get the word out. Commerce had to rely on well-placed advertisements to show up and be positioned where the target audience was. But now, in the Internet age, people are surfing in droves on the web. We know where they will be, and the savvy marketer can now get a very clear view of their searching and browsing behavior. So, instead of making a lot of noise with paid marketing and vying with your competitors for ad space (outbound marketing), you can carefully place attention-grabbing content in key online venues and—in very targeted ways—engage your audience, intrigue them and get them to come to you. Welcome to inbound marketing.

Let’s be clear on the difference between these two approaches. Outbound marketing requires outreach on the part of the marketer through concerted efforts such as paid and search engine marketing techniques. You find the customer and try to actively capture their attention. Inbound marketing is the opposite, wherein intelligently placed content (blogs, articles, syndicated content on sharing sites, social media posts, etc.) is distributed and made available for the public to find and digest, hopefully influencing their decision to come to you to find out more. Whereas outbound marketing is typically “live” only for a finite period through budgetary spending and rented digital space, inbound marketing content is perpetual and available for discovery without boundaries. Because of this key difference, it is important to make sure the everlasting content you put out there to drive people to you is of high quality, is relevant to your target audience and provides genuine thought leadership in your industry.

Let’s take a look at some helpful questions to ask yourself as you attempt to strengthen your inbound marketing strategy and gauge its effectiveness:

* What are current trending topics? Thought leadership is an important part of inbound marketing. People will gravitate towards your content and follow through to your website or offer if they recognize authority and influence in what you have to offer. Can they learn something? Can they benefit from what you offer? And why would they listen to you? The best way to be a thought leader is to put out relevant content on a regular basis that revolves around topical and trending discussions in your industry or space. Spend some time researching and thinking about the current topics of interest in your industry space, and then create assets that answer or speak to those discussions to distribute on sites like LinkedIn, SlideShare, YouTube and Facebook. Be timely, be relevant.

* What are your competitors talking about? Listening to what your audience is talking about is not enough. You also need to pay close attention to what your competitors are saying and what kind of buzz they are creating. Like you, they are probably distributing their own content on hot topics, but what if they’re missing the mark? If your service or product does a better job of addressing a trending issue or pain point, then jump on it. Use your inbound marketing resources to enter the discussion and show you have a better solution, and do it in a way that ties back to your offerings. Instead of coming off as a veiled ad, your content should position your offering as a more intelligent and beneficial approach to the specific problem or issue under discussion.

* What are industry analysts and influencers blogging or commenting on? Every industry has its share of analysts and influencers. Analysts (who make a living performing primary and secondary research on specific industries) and influencers (who have authori...

The very first thing that scares most people about sales is the initial cold call. Often it can turn away a potential salesperson before they ever get their feet wet in the business. Cold-calling can be hard! What if I told you that a few simple cold calling tips can be the difference between sinking and swimming? Give these tips a try.

Start with a smile. Have you ever heard the expression, “You will attract more bees with honey than vinegar?” The simple truth is that people are just more attracted to someone who is smiling—and, yes, you can actually hear a difference in the tone of a voice when someone you are talking to on the phone is smiling. Here’s another interesting thing happens to someone who is smiling: They will automatically be more expressive with their words, their tone and their demeanor. The first three seconds of cold calling contact are all about likeability. Smile!

Remember to ask, “Am I catching you at a good time?” The very first thing that puts people on edge is the perception that you are treading on their personal time, space or safety. One of the easiest things you can do to warm up a sales prospect is to communicate respect for their time. Remember that the first 30 seconds of a cold call are about communicating respect and safety and appearing trustworthy.

Pre-think your call to action. If you are lucky enough to get through by following the first cold calling tips, don’t lose sight of what are you hoping to accomplish the first time you talk to the prospect. Within three minutes you need to clearly identify the purpose of your call.

Expect objections. The name of the game in cold calling is remembering that people do not spend their money easily. This is not personal; it’s business. If you remember to expect objections before you get started it will be much easier to remain polite under all circumstances.

Propose value. Whether you are selling a product or a service, remember that value usually begins with proposing something that’s better than what the competition has to offer. That value proposition usually comes back to either speed of delivery, price or the overall quality of the product or service. Know what your value proposition is before you call.

Always ask open-ended questions. In the best possible scenario you are trying to get your prospect to talk to you and give you key information to make the sale. You cannot gain key information if you are not asking questions and avidly listening.

Cast a wide net. In a large sea, there are millions of fish. How many fish you catch really comes back to how many times you drop your line with bait on it. One of the key principles in cold calling is resiliency: You have to keep fishing, over and over again. Eventually you’ll catch something.

Take your time and hope that the power will shift. Another tactic you can utilize in cold calling tips is to be short on words and to draw out the conversation. The best possible result is that you stop asking the prospect questions and the prospect uses that time to start asking you questions. In cold calling this is where the power shift happens that allows for sales conversion.

Take detailed digital notes and leave the door open. In this new day and age most cold-callers are taking notes in a CRM or CRM portal. If one is not available to you, the next best thing is to jot digital notes with feedback about interest level, objections and the next best time to contact the prospect. Why digital notes? They are faster to take, and they are easy to search.

Repeat after me: “The gatekeeper is your new best friend.” Never, ever fail to recognize the importance of the gatekeeper. You can use all of the tips above to create a separate “sell” to get from the gatekeeper to the decision-maker.

The most effective cold calling tips help you turn your sale into a “game.” It can actually be fun! While the ideal outcome is always to connect with your prospect, remember not to let it discourage your process if you do not. Just like anything in life, it can take hours of practice to become a great cold-caller. The trick is not to give up.

For more for sales and marketing best practice tips, visit us at ZINFI.com.

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The very first thing that scares most people about sales is the initial cold call. Often it can turn away a potential salesperson before they ever get their feet wet in the business. Cold-calling can be hard! What if I told you that a few simple cold calling tips can be the difference between sinking and swimming? Give these tips a try.* Start with a smile. Have you ever heard the expression, “You will attract more bees with honey than vinegar?” The simple truth is that people are just more attracted to someone who is smiling—and, yes, you can actually hear a difference in the tone of a voice when someone you are talking to on the phone is smiling. Here’s another interesting thing happens to someone who is smiling: They will automatically be more expressive with their words, their tone and their demeanor. The first three seconds of cold calling contact are all about likeability. Smile!* Remember to ask, “Am I catching you at a good time?” The very first thing that puts people on edge is the perception that you are treading on their personal time, space or safety. One of the easiest things you can do to warm up a sales prospect is to communicate respect for their time. Remember that the first 30 seconds of a cold call are about communicating respect and safety and appearing trustworthy.* Pre-think your call to action. If you are lucky enough to get through by following the first cold calling tips, don’t lose sight of what are you hoping to accomplish the first time you talk to the prospect. Within three minutes you need to clearly identify the purpose of your call.* Expect objections. The name of the game in cold calling is remembering that people do not spend their money easily. This is not personal; it’s business. If you remember to expect objections before you get started it will be much easier to remain polite under all circumstances.* Propose value. Whether you are selling a product or a service, remember that value usually begins with proposing something that’s better than what the competition has to offer. That value proposition usually comes back to either speed of delivery, price or the overall quality of the product or service. Know what your value proposition is before you call.* Always ask open-ended questions. In the best possible scenario you are trying to get your prospect to talk to you and give you key information to make the sale. You cannot gain key information if you are not asking questions and avidly listening.* Cast a wide net. In a large sea, there are millions of fish. How many fish you catch really comes back to how many times you drop your line with bait on it. One of the key principles in cold calling is resiliency: You have to keep fishing, over and over again. Eventually you’ll catch something.* Take your time and hope that the power will shift. Another tactic you can utilize in cold calling tips is to be short on words and to draw out the conversation. The best possible result is that you stop asking the prospect questions and the prospect uses that time to start asking you questions. In cold calling this is where the power shift happens that allows for sales conversion.* Take detailed digital notes and leave the door open. In this new day and age most cold-callers are taking notes in a CRM or CRM portal. If one is not available to you, the next best thing is to jot digital notes with feedback about interest level, objections and the next best time to contact the prospect. Why digital notes? They are faster to take, and they are easy to search.* Repeat after me: “The gatekeeper is your new best friend.” Never, ever fail to recognize the importance of the gatekeeper. You can use all of the tips above to create a separate “sell” to get from the gatekeeper to the decision-maker.

The very first thing that scares most people about sales is the initial cold call. Often it can turn away a potential salesperson before they ever get their feet wet in the business. Cold-calling can be hard! What if I told you that a few simple cold calling tips can be the difference between sinking and swimming? Give these tips a try.

* Start with a smile. Have you ever heard the expression, “You will attract more bees with honey than vinegar?” The simple truth is that people are just more attracted to someone who is smiling—and, yes, you can actually hear a difference in the tone of a voice when someone you are talking to on the phone is smiling. Here’s another interesting thing happens to someone who is smiling: They will automatically be more expressive with their words, their tone and their demeanor. The first three seconds of cold calling contact are all about likeability. Smile!

* Remember to ask, “Am I catching you at a good time?” The very first thing that puts people on edge is the perception that you are treading on their personal time, space or safety. One of the easiest things you can do to warm up a sales prospect is to communicate respect for their time. Remember that the first 30 seconds of a cold call are about communicating respect and safety and appearing trustworthy.

* Pre-think your call to action. If you are lucky enough to get through by following the first cold calling tips, don’t lose sight of what are you hoping to accomplish the first time you talk to the prospect. Within three minutes you need to clearly identify the purpose of your call.

* Expect objections. The name of the game in cold calling is remembering that people do not spend their money easily. This is not personal; it’s business. If you remember to expect objections before you get started it will be much easier to remain polite under all circumstances.

* Propose value. Whether you are selling a product or a service, remember that value usually begins with proposing something that’s better than what the competition has to offer. That value proposition usually comes back to either speed of delivery, price or the overall quality of the product or service. Know what your value proposition is before you call.

* Always ask open-ended questions. In the best possible scenario you are trying to get your prospect to talk to you and give you key information to make the sale. You cannot gain key information if you are not asking questions and avidly listening.

* Cast a wide net. In a large sea, there are millions of fish. How many fish you catch really comes back to how many times you drop your line with bait on it. One of the key principles in cold calling is resiliency: You have to keep fishing, over and over again. Eventually you’ll catch something.

* Take your time and hope that the power will shift. Another tactic you can utilize in cold calling tips is to be short on words and to draw out the conversation. The best possible result is that you stop asking the prospect questions and the prospect uses that time to start asking you questions. In cold calling this is where the power shift happens that allows for sales conversion.

* Take detailed digital notes and leave the door open. In this new day and age most cold-callers are taking notes in a CRM or CRM portal. If one is not available to you, the next best thing is to jot digital notes with feedback about interest level, objections and the next best time to contact the prospect. Why digital notes? They are faster to take, and they are easy to search.

* Repeat after me: “The gatekeeper is your new best friend.” Never, ever fail to recognize the importance of the gatekeeper. You can use all of the tips above to create a separate “sell” to get from the gatekeeper to the decision-maker.

The most effective cold calling tips help you turn your sale into a “game.

What is a partner portal? What are the primary components of today’s partner portal? Where does program content end and relationship automation begin? And why are so many systems needed to make it work (even though in reality we know that most of the elements of the partner portal don’t actually work well together)? In truth, most partner portals today require too much work and too much dependency on subsystems like CRMs and learning management and incentive management tools that are all patched together. We know they don’t flow together well, they don’t work together well and ultimately they create a very complex experience for all users. As a result, partners are frustrated, vendors are frustrated, programs are not updated on time, and it’s hard to find price lists or product information or the latest training information or events. Basically, it’s a nightmare.

What if we took a different approach? What would the next-generation partner portal look like? What about adopting a unified approach that creates an entirely different user experience? If you had a magic wand, perhaps you could wave it and rebuild your partner portal today in a way that would make it really easy for your partners to log in, find the information that’s relevant to their role, search for and easily find the tools they need to do what they need to do and then get out—and all of this within few minutes. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? In this article, we’ll explore the seven essential components you need to make available to your partners in a high-functioning partner portal, and then seven additional capabilities that your own organization requires in order to manage that partner portal effectively.

The Unified Partner Experience

When a partner logs in to the partner portal, he or she will access multiple tool related to program information, product pricing, product details, training, incentives, marketing plans, sales plans and so on. That entire experience needs to happen in a seamless way. When a partner goes from one zone to another—say, from the marketing zone to the sales zone—the experience shouldn’t change. However, the prevailing reality today is that each of these zones are supported by different systems that are poorly integrated, and so they repeatedly encounter different user interfaces and different workflows. For example, partners may have to enter the same information multiple times as they move from zone to zone within the portal, despite the fact that the information is already in the system. It’s really a clumsy experience.

The goal of the unified partner experience is to eliminate all of these issues. To get there, your partner portal needs to address seven key requirements:

Personalized access. When a salesperson logs in to the partner portal, all of the elements of the partner portal available to that individual should be about sales. There is no point for that person to be reading about technical issues or marketing programs and plans when that individual is not responsible for those aspects of the business. Similarly, if a technical person logs in and is fully focused on technical content or content related to products and solutions, there is no point for that individual to have access to content related to sales incentives or marketing development funds or any other sales- or marketing-related materials. Personalized access is the most important way to simplify the user experience. As a part of that requirement, it’s essential that the entire engagement with the partner portal always be fully localized—i.e., it needs to appear in the user’s own language.

Onboarding automation. This is a huge enabler, especially if you have a broad channel with hundreds or perhaps thousands of partners and are constantly launching new products and bringing new partners into the program that you frequently have to stair-step on 30- or 90-day cycles on various aspects of your programs. When you can automate these steps, providing automated checklists that take partners sequentially through each critical functional area (marketing, sales, financial planning, technology, etc.)—and when these processes are customized according to a partner’s role—the process becomes highly efficient and, most importantly, it keeps partners informed about what they need to do next. Here’s an opportunity to significantly scale your engagement model global by various functions and roles.

Programs library and management. As soon as your partners log in, they should be able to easily find the marketing programs that are available in that specific quarter. For example, a salesperson logging in should be able to immediately access all of the sales programs available that quarter. If there are incentives or specific initiatives that are being rolled out in that time frame, the salesperson should know about it. Whatever the program—marketing, sales, initiatives, dividends, etc.—it’s crucial to promote such programs in a structured way, so that individual users see the programs that are relevant to them at exactly the right time. A well-designed partner portal is absolutely essential to making that happen.

Training & certification. When you launch a set of solutions that require some level of training, whether you are in insurance or real estate or franchises or technology, your channel partners need to be properly trained. You may have a simple training & certification program, you may not have any formal program at all, or you may have a very complex program with multiple certification tracks. In every case, however, the partner should be able to log in and, based on their role and their own business initiatives, be able to find the proper training, create a learning path and a certification path that will take them through the programs step-by-step and get educated—either online using a learning management system or offline by attending your events and training sessions. The entire learning experience needs to be totally unified, whether partners are attending training sessions or certification sessions, and partners should be able to manage the entire experience online in a seamless way.

Business/functional planning and contract management. Today, if your channel management team engages with channel partners (especially the larger ones) to put together marketing or sales or financial or technical plans, or perhaps put all of these together into a single business plan, you need a structured way to manage that process through the partner portal. Today, most of those engagements still happen through email, and it’s extremely difficult to keep track of them, especially when a set of partners transfers over from one channel manager to another. It’s almost impossible for the new channel manager to get up to speed, and in many cases the manager actually loses that engagement. Again, providing a unified experience through the partner portal is essential to addressing the problem.

Incentives management. Based on their performance, partners should always know what additional rewards, rebates and market development funds they can access. If this information is not revealed in a logical way and partners have to spend a lot of time figuring out where the incentives are, they will disengage. The outcome? Over half of incentive dollars in partner programs today are simply not utilized. That’s because partners struggle to find which programs relevant to their activities are being funded, how to apply for the funds and how to claim them when they meet the performance requirements. There must be a unified experience in the incentives area that links back to how a partner was on-boarded, what planning they did, what programs they attended and what training and certification sessions they participated in. In most systems today, that information doesn’t flow together and thus requires way too much effort for partners to find.

Community. We have entered a Web 3.0 model that’s moved beyond crowdsourcing. It’s about tapping into the knowledge of the community. Think about it: Your channel partners hold a huge reservoir of knowledge about your products and solutions, how to position against the competition, about emerging opportunities that may be impossible for you to track directly. Think of community as a vibrant forum where partners can share ideas, pictures of events, current activities—not only generating excitement among partners, but also creating a corner where you can find inspiration and ideas for improving your products, solutions and channel programs moving forward.

Unified Vendor Experience

Now that we have explored the essential parts of a unified user experience, let’s spend at least a few minutes thinking about a unified vendor experience. How can a unified experience make your life, as a vendor managing a partner portal, easier? At ZINFI, every time we talk to a potential customer who is struggling to manage their global partner portal, we tend to hear about the same basic challenges and requirements.

Group and role management. This is closely related to the personalized and localized access I referred to in the previous section. For your partner portal to be successful, you have to be able to set up multiple roles and multiple groups by partner tier, partner classification, partner business model, capabilities, etc. in order to customize what individual partners are able to access when they log in. If you are a several-million-dollar company, chances are you have a significant volume of information that is not relevant for every partner who accesses the partner portal. When you upload programs, incentive, training—all of the content your partners are accessing—it’s absolutely essential that you are able to tie all of that information back to the specific partner groups or roles you have created so they are exposed only to the most pertinent information.

Dynamic content management....

What is a partner portal? What are the primary components of today’s partner portal? Where does program content end and relationship automation begin? And why are so many systems needed to make it work (even though in reality we know that most of the elements of the partner portal don’t actually work well together)? In truth, most partner portals today require too much work and too much dependency on subsystems like CRMs and learning management and incentive management tools that are all patched together. We know they don’t flow together well, they don’t work together well and ultimately they create a very complex experience for all users. As a result, partners are frustrated, vendors are frustrated, programs are not updated on time, and it’s hard to find price lists or product information or the latest training information or events. Basically, it’s a nightmare.What if we took a different approach? What would the next-generation partner portal look like? What about adopting a unified approach that creates an entirely different user experience? If you had a magic wand, perhaps you could wave it and rebuild your partner portal today in a way that would make it really easy for your partners to log in, find the information that’s relevant to their role, search for and easily find the tools they need to do what they need to do and then get out—and all of this within few minutes. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? In this article, we’ll explore the seven essential components you need to make available to your partners in a high-functioning partner portal, and then seven additional capabilities that your own organization requires in order to manage that partner portal effectively.The Unified Partner ExperienceWhen a partner logs in to the partner portal, he or she will access multiple tool related to program information, product pricing, product details, training, incentives, marketing plans, sales plans and so on. That entire experience needs to happen in a seamless way. When a partner goes from one zone to another—say, from the marketing zone to the sales zone—the experience shouldn’t change. However, the prevailing reality today is that each of these zones are supported by different systems that are poorly integrated, and so they repeatedly encounter different user interfaces and different workflows. For example, partners may have to enter the same information multiple times as they move from zone to zone within the portal, despite the fact that the information is already in the system. It’s really a clumsy experience.The goal of the unified partner experience is to eliminate all of these issues. To get there, your partner portal needs to address seven key requirements:* Personalized access. When a salesperson logs in to the partner portal, all of the elements of the partner portal available to that individual should be about sales. There is no point for that person to be reading about technical issues or marketing programs and plans when that individual is not responsible for those aspects of the business. Similarly, if a technical person logs in and is fully focused on technical content or content related to products and solutions, there is no point for that individual to have access to content related to sales incentives or marketing development funds or any other sales- or marketing-related materials. Personalized access is the most important way to simplify the user experience. As a part of that requirement, it’s essential that the entire engagement with the partner portal always be fully localized—i.e., it needs to appear in the user’s own language.* Onboarding automation. This is a huge enabler, especially if you have a broad channel with hundreds or perhaps thousands of partners and are constantly launching new products and bring...